


I Fought The Laws (except I didn't)

by UnderTheFridge



Category: Alien (1979), Aliens (1986)
Genre: Burke can suck it though, Gen, Missing Scene, Robots, Three Laws of Robotics, neither can Ripley, poor Bishop can't catch a break, sorry Artificial People
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2016-11-03
Packaged: 2018-08-28 21:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8462980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnderTheFridge/pseuds/UnderTheFridge
Summary: A 'missing scene', because did anyone ever ask Ripley whether the Brutal Robot Murder Attempt had anything to do with her dislike of synthetics? Or did Weyland-Yutani just ignore her, discredit her statements and sit hard on any evidence that the Ash models could, under the right/wrong circumstances, be persuaded to kill a human?
(Spoiler: it's the latter one)





	

“Burke!” Ripley says urgently, but the other human either doesn’t hear or doesn’t realise, and is gone. She sighs heavily in time with the door’s closing hiss and rests her backside on a cabinet. “God damn it.”

“Is there a problem?” he asks, and she gives him such a glare that he automatically takes a step back. Her mouth draws down and she takes out a cigarette and lights it.

“He knows. And yet he still leaves me in here. With you.” She lets smoke drift into the air. “ _ Asshole _ .”

If he’s shocked by her opinion of Burke, he gives no sign of it.

“What happened? If you don’t mind.”

She decides to dignify that question with an answer, but it’s a cold and snappish one. “What? The Nostromo? I’ve told that story a hundred times already. What makes you think I want to tell it again?”

“I mean your - the malfunction.”

“The  _ synthetic _ ?” she says, relishing the way he dislikes the word. It’s a cruel victory for her over a blameless and (allegedly) harmless being, but she doesn’t feel as bad as she perhaps should. “We didn’t know. Not at first. It was right before we went - the science officer got replaced. With this guy, Ash. That’s what he called himself, Ash… he was ok, as far as we knew. A little cold, a bit of a snob. But ok.” She taps her cigarette with her finger.

“You know space freight,” although he might not; she assumes he does, “attracts all types. He was probably a company snitch, but it’s not like we were worried.” Her eyes are fixed on the door at the other side of the room, but not looking at it. “Then Kane came back. With the thing on his face.” She is silent for a long moment, but he doesn’t try to interrupt. “Ash directly disregarded the containment protocol and let them in. I wanted to keep them in quarantine. Then, when the… when the thing came out,” the burst of blood and viscera, and the screams “he didn’t want us to kill it. And when it started to kill  _ us _ \- the rest of us - he wouldn’t help. I accessed the central computer… and you know what it said?”

She looks up and he’s gazing at her steadily. Blank, accepting rather than calculating. Her lips purse. She still doesn’t like whatever’s going on behind that simulacrum of a face.

“ _ Crew expendable _ . That’s what it said. Ash was prepared to let every single human on that goddamn ship die, if that was what it took to bring that creature back to the company. So, I got mad at him. So, he tried to kill me. Just straight-up murder me.  _ That’s _ what happened.”

He nods. “I understand why you’re finding it hard to trust artificial humans.”

She snorts. “Oh, you  _ understand _ . I know there are supposed to be these safeguards now, to stop them being… twitchy. But what would it take, to override that? What would it take for you to decide that those  _ things _ are worth more than we are?”

“I could never prioritise whatever organisms we find above the welfare of the human crew.”

“Burke probably knows how. You might not kill any of us to get there, but one word from him and those things’ll be running all over the ship.”

He looks at the ground. “I don’t think you’ll ever entirely trust me, Lieutenant Ripley.”

“You’re damn right about that.”

“But if anyone were to give me orders to preserve anything we find - living or dead specimens - I would have to tell you about those orders. If you asked.”

And he leaves it at that. But the more Ripley thinks about it, the more she realises it’s an invitation - for her to put a little more faith in him. Hopefully, if she does, neither of them will end up losing their heads.

**Author's Note:**

> Alien-universe synthetics seem to be Asimov-inspired to some degree: Bishop literally quotes the First Law, although it's never stated whether he has the other two as well.  
> (Talk to me about how Ash malfunctioned because of the relative strength of his 'blend in' vs 'care of humans' vs 'retrieve organism' orders burning out his neural pathways)  
> (and about how 'Try Harder' was David's 'Crew Expendable' in Prometheus and that's why Vickers is so scared of him)  
> (...actually don't bc you will open the Headcanon Floodgates and there is no going back from that)


End file.
